Category Archives: blessing

What Love’s Got to Do With It

08 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by in blessing, gratitude, Love, presence

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On this 49th anniversary of my wedding, I am taking note of how Love looks at this stage of the journey:

  • it is honoring each other’s rhythms of waking and sleeping
  • it is helping the other look for the things that have been lost–glasses, the keys, the list you just had in your hand
  • it is taking the puppy for a walk together almost every morning
  • it is reminding each other that this is the day that the trash goes out, the flowers need watering or the tax bill is due
  • it is taking quick trips to the bakery, bagel store or coffee shop for morning treats
  • it is sharing memes from Facebook with each other
  • it is reading aloud from books that nourish and challenge
  • it allowing the one with the most limber back on that day to unload the bottom shelf of the dishwasher
  • it is laughing aloud at the jokes the other tells, no matter how humorous they are
  • it is reaching those places behind where the other cannot reach to bandage, to scrub, to connect a clasp
  • it is sitting with the other as a silent presence when there is grief too deep for words
  • it is taking naps together in the late afternoon
  • it is making tiny things into the “lark of the week,” like getting new passport pictures taken or discovering the way to get the destination without running into the President’s motorcade
  • it is listening carefully to the words not spoken, that fill up the space
  • it is talking seriously about the unknown ahead without undue fear or anxiety

And so much more. It is a gift,  a gift of Grace and Love. We are having a happy anniversary, and I am very grateful! And with e.e. cummings, as calligraphed by Corita, I am holding it with care.

 

 

Blessed is She Who Believed

02 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by in blessing, gratitude, grief, Spirit, spiritual direction, wisdom

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Betsy'sQuist

I sit each morning at my window that faces east toward the rising sun. Behind and  sometimes around me is an antique quilt, passed down to me by Betsy, my spiritual director of nearly 25 years, who died suddenly on Good Friday. She had been in a process of recuperation for the past five months, and we had spoken a few times on the phone, but we had scheduled face to face appointments for the next three months. Instead of seeing her in person, I will be sitting with her spirit in  the space she blessed for me with her generous gift.

She embodied the spiritual director as a Quilter in my life, taking ragged, old pieces of experience and belief, and with skill and patience helped me to envision and live into my own ongoing present life with the Holy, a wholeness, a work of art. We came from differing faith traditions. Initially our callings were very different–mine in public ministry, hers in intimate spiritual direction. Our family systems were a contrast in culture, size and sensibility. Yet from the start we were united in our quest for an intentional life of Spirit.

I have been musing these past days over all that I learned in my hours with Betsy. With the gospel writer I could say that if I were to recall everything, the world itself would not be able to contain it. However, as I grieve and remember, I keep assembling “squares”in the quilt that was gathered together in the years of our shared spiritual journey.

  • She expanded my perception of the spiritual to include the visual arts. We began by using the sand tray, a tool from Jungian psychology which helps the seeker choose objects in her own arrangement that reflect the journey of the soul. I did not feel at all adept in this exercise, but I did begin to see that the material world could be an outer image of my interior one. Then as I risked trying to express my soul in collage, she encouraged me enthusiastically often pointing out things that I had not observed about where my heart was.
  • She did not use the word Grace freely, but for me, she embodied it. Her welcoming presence, her compassionate listening, her gentle course correction when I got tangled up in my own frenzy, sadness and despair, were all manifestations of the Grace of the Holy One. After a life full of experienced judging and criticism, I found a place of Spirit where I was my longings for the Holy One were accepted just the way they  were; she offered more compassion for me than I was able to have for myself.
  • She was generous with her time, her space and her resources. Often after we met she would follow up with a notation on something we had pondered about together or readily loaned a book or resource. I never felt hurried or rushed in her presence, except by my own tight agenda.
  • She exemplified for me what a spiritual director actually was, not someone who “directed,” but someone who accompanied me as my life unfolded, and helped my see how the Spirit might be at work in and through me.
  • She trusted the Holy One implicitly and explicitly, and knew that “all will be well, all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.” When my mother died, she was able to companion me in a way that both acknowledged the loss and gave hope for the days ahead. When I wrestled with the unknowing future, she brought a serenity rooted to the Spirit that allowed me to rest in the unknowing.

She often remarked on the fact that we were two Elizabeths seeking a spiritual path in the Christian tradition together. And in her loss I have peace as I mourn in the words of the Elizabeth in the gospel of Luke, who when entrusted with the momentous event in the life of her cousin Mary who was to be the Christ-bearer, sang with joy: Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of that which was spoken to her by the Lord. (Luke 1:45). Betsy believed that she was in the hands of the Holy One in all parts of her life, and her belief nurtured and nourished my belief. When I sit on my couch each morning, I will believe that Betsy’s life here has been fulfilled, and is still being fulfilled in my own. I am grateful!

 

 

 

Holy Week: The Lorica

24 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by in blessing, Holy Week, music, peace, prayer, presence

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download-112457-Christ-In-The-Storm-On-The-Sea-Of-Galilee

The last practice from Joyce Rupp that I am observing this holy season is repeating the “lorica,” a Celtic prayer attributed to St. Patrick, invoked for protection and mindfulness. Last week on St. Patrick’s Day my inbox was filled with images and versions of that prayer, in calligraphy, icon and song. I knew that I was going to pray it myself this week, so I enjoyed the diversity of forms that were shared.  From the extended prayer, I especially like these parts:

I arise today with the strength of God to comfort me, the might of God to uphold me, the wisdom of God to guide me…

Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ with me, Christ within me, Christ around me, Christ about me, Christ on my left, Christ on my right…Christ in the heart of everyone that thinks of me, Christ in each mouth that speaks of me, Christ in each eye that sees me, Christ in each one that hears me.

The cadence and the tempo of the prayer ground me in my present moment, who I am right now, and from whence my help comes. But the image of a lorica is an armored breastplate–from medieval times, metal, sturdy impenetrable. Whether it is too remote by centuries or location or I am not a military type, I don’t find that image helpful. Nor, as I looked through books of painting and sculptures of Christ at the end of his life, did I find one that represented the sense on presence and protection that the lorica gives me. Then I  remembered that for several decades I have always carried with me a postcard of Rembrandt’s “Christ in the Storm.” The painting was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum many years ago, but before it was stolen, I was able to see it hanging there. The painting is huge, impressive, compelling. From the first glance I was captivated by it–the contrast of light and dark, the characters of fear and confusion, and in half-light down toward the right of the painting is Jesus asleep in the boat. The image of the sleeping, yet powerful Christ, stays with me, especially when my own “rough seas” seem to be gigantic and overwhelming. No matter what, I can trust the One who is at rest because he knows that all will be well, and at the right moment, he will rise and say, “Peace, be still,” to the madness, the wreckage, the terror that swirls around me, that swirls in our systems of work and connection, that swirls in the chaotic world.

So in these last days of Lent and Holy Week, I wake each morning saying the words of the Lorica, keeping in the eye of my heart the Christ whose knowledge and power and grace will bring all things to wholeness in the fullness of time.

May Christ guard me today from poison and fire, from drowning and wounding, so my mission may bear fruit in abundance.

 

I prefer my image of Jesus from Rembrandt to the art in this youtube from the Celtic Women, but the song with the words helps me in my planting myself at peace with Jesus in the boat. May each of you have holy days of trust and peace despite the raging of the storm and the roiling of the waters!

Lent 1: Blessing the Children

13 Saturday Feb 2016

Posted by in blessing, children, Lent, prayer, Uncategorized

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In Lent this year, I am practicing some themes fromGreeneValentine15 Celtic spirituality, suggested by Joyce Rupp, one per week. Her first theme is to notice and celebrate the Presence of the Holy in the ordinary–the small details of our lives–our routines, our surroundings and the people who are front and center. She makes the suggestion that every morning and evening we bless our children.

I have prayed for each of my children and grandchildren since before they were born. But in picking up this Lenten practice which is more regular and more intense, I notice first that my prayers for them now are often either “defensive,” asking for protection or correction, or are just generic, “bless the beasts and the children” kinds of prayers. To bless them in a focused way twice a day is calling me to focus on each of them in his or her particularity, and to see them more deeply and lovingly.

John O’Donahue in his book, To Bless the Space between Us, describes blessing this way:

A blessing is not a sentiment or a question; it is a gracious invocation where the human heart pleads with the divine heart.

So I embark this practice with an open heart. What do I already know about each of them, two of them since their conception?  What do I still need to observe and to learn? In what can I take delight and rejoice? What concerns can I lift to the Holy One for healing, for satisfying, for directing, for deepening? And how can I be a blessing to each of them, without hovering, prying, judging or interfering?

It was a joy-filled exercise to inscribe in my journal the name of each one, and to limn out the qualities and aspects of that personality, as I pray for blessing for her or for him for that morning and evening. In the collection of the eight of them (in-laws included!), there is such diversity in temperament, style and  affections: introverts and extroverts, actors and contemplatives, students and athletes, cheerleaders and followers.  In addition, they all keep growing up, changing, even the adults among them, so that my list keeps inviting additions and subtractions day by day. I bless school assignments, sports events, play dates, rehearsals, and after-school lessons. I bless marriages, job searches, office politics, bank accounts. And I bless the working and loving, the hopes and the dreams, as well as bumps in the road that seem to block those dreams.  And I pray for each unique spirit of that growing one, made in the image of the Holy, that it be preserved and nourished, and, yes, protected, as it follows the path of the Spirit that is meant for it.

Joyce Rupp suggests this prayer of blessing:

May God and the angels guide, guard, and protect you this night.

And so I go to sleep praying this blessing for each one by name…Sean, Erica Lee, Dalton, Malakai, Erica Brooke, Ezra, Theo, Sadie. I am filled with hope as I bless each one, even  as I enter into the arms of the angels who watch and bless me as I sleep, believing that the One who is blessing me will also bless them. A loving way to begin Lent!